Sensory Alphabet Visualization

Remove your glasses or contacts, get into a comfortable seated position or lie on your back. You may simply close your eyes or palm your eyes. Palming involves rubbing your hands together to generate heat and placing your cupped palms over your closed eyes in order to block 100% of the light, creating total darkness. Do not touch your eyes or put pressure on your eyes. It helps to rest your elbows on a surface so your shoulders don't get tired.

Listen along and practice focusing your mind and visualizing what you hear. This mental focus technique is about visualizing 26 different objects for about 10 seconds each, starting with an object that begins with the letter A, then B, then C, all the way to Z. Try to incorporate all of your senses: what the object looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, or tastes like. You may pick one category like foods, states, countries, etc. or you can be random with it.

Transcript

In this mental focusing practice,

We're going to apply the idea of centralization of the eyes to centralization of the mind.

So please find yourself in a comfortable seated position or lie down on your back and prepare to palm your eyes.

So rub your hands together briskly to create some heat through friction and gently place your cupped palms over your closed eyes and start to sink into a state of deep relaxation.

Before we can focus the mind and centralize the mind,

We first have to calm down the body and the breath.

So take a moment to scan your physical body from head to toe.

Relaxing your head,

Your neck,

Your shoulders,

Sinking down,

Relaxing all the organs in your abdomen,

Relaxing your hips,

Your upper legs,

Your knees,

Your lower legs,

Your feet.

Relaxing your arms,

Your hands,

And relaxing your eyes and your brain.

Now bring your awareness to your breath,

Deepening your breath in and out through your nose.

Extending your exhales to make them twice as long as your inhales.

Now that your body and your breath are calm,

We can bring the awareness to the mind.

The opposite of mental centralization is multitasking or thinking a bunch of different thoughts all at the same time,

Juggling 10 different projects at once,

Which not only leads to extra stress and strain,

But actually decreases the quality of your work and your attention.

So by practicing mental centralization,

We get better at focusing,

Lengthening our attention span,

And achieving a higher quality of work.

So what I want you to do is visualize the alphabet A through Z all in a line.

Now the opposite of centralization,

Eccentric fixation,

Would be to try and see all 26 letters all at once,

Equally clearly.

But instead,

We're going to centralize and make our way through the alphabet one letter at a time,

And what I want you to do is to visualize,

Using any one of your five senses,

An object that begins with that letter.

So bring your attention to the letter A.

I'll give you a few examples to begin with.

So we'll visualize an apple.

So we're going to use all five senses with the apple.

So visualize what the apple looks like.

What color is your apple?

What size is it?

When you touch it,

What's the texture like on the skin?

Now we'll see what the apple tastes like.

So take a big bite out of the crisp apple and taste what that apple tastes like.

You can even smell it.

What does the apple smell like?

Take another big bite and listen.

What does the apple sound like when you take a big crunch out of it?

So we'll spend about ten seconds visualizing each object.

So we'll move to the letter B.

Now you can visualize a balloon.

So what does your balloon look like?

Once again,

What color is it?

What size and shape is it?

What does the balloon feel like when you rub your fingers over the surface?

What kind of sound does it make when you rub your fingers over that texture?

Now you might not necessarily want to taste or smell every single object you visualize,

But just do what you can.

So we'll move to the letter C.

Visualize a cat.

What type of cat do you see in front of you?

What color is its fur?

What kind of patterns?

What does that cat feel like when you pet it?

What kind of sounds does the cat make when you hear it purring?

Now D.

Visualize a dog.

What kind of dog do you see?

What color and patterns are on the dog's coat of fur?

What does that dog feel like and sound like?

For the letter E,

We want to switch it up and try and visualize something that we can't taste,

Touch,

Smell,

Or feel.

Only see an exclamation point.

So visualize looking at an exclamation point,

Just remembering that vertical straight line with a dot underneath it.

That's all you can visualize.

You can't taste or touch or smell or hear an exclamation point.

You can only see it.

So you want to try and switch it up like that.

Visualize different types of objects that you can only see,

Or that you can't see,

But you can feel.

Like wind for W.

You can feel the wind,

The breeze on your skin,

But you can't see it.

So you're using a different type of memory.

Or you could visualize love for L.

You can feel love,

But you can't necessarily see it.

So I want you to start by spending just about 10 seconds making your way all the way through the alphabet,

Visualizing 26 different things for 10 seconds each.

Which should take you just a little over 4 minutes.

And what's happening here is that when you're picturing or visualizing an object that starts with one letter of the alphabet,

That object is in your central awareness.

And all the other letters of the alphabet that you're not thinking about drift off center into the periphery of your mind.

So just like how with your eyes you only want to regard one part of an object,

Or one word in a paragraph,

Or one letter in a word,

And allow that one to be clearest and best.

We're doing the same thing with the mind.

We want only one thought or one object to be in the mind at a time instead of multiple things battling for your attention.

And as you get better at focusing on it for 10 seconds at a time,

You can start to focus on that object for longer.

So you can keep your attention on the object for 20 seconds,

Or 30 seconds,

Or even a whole minute eventually.

Without your mind wandering.

So start small with just 10 seconds.

It should be pretty easy to prevent your mind from wandering for just 10 seconds.

Because it gets to wander to a new object every 10 seconds.

So it should feel satisfied.

And not like you're forcing it to stay still.

So make your way through the rest of the alphabet and conjure up your own images and own memories to apply to this mental focusing practice of mental centralization.

Reviews

Wow, it really worked! This feels like aerobics for my imagination. I will try it again and look forward to generating different imagery... and inadvertently forgetting my troubles at the same time. I am intrigued to think about how focusing on one thing pushes everything else to the periphery. This was a lesson in how the mind works. Thank you, Nathan!

What a cool practice! I love the sound effects, too. This will be a lot of fun to do over and over, increasing my time each go round.

This is fabulous. Bookmarked and downloaded. I've worked in crisis services and we often use a similar technique to calm people or help them decrease anxiety. They observe their surroundings at our request and name a certain number of items they can touch, a certain number they can see, hear, feel, and (depending on the situation), taste. They may not actually DO the actions, but they are to observe, notice, focus, and verbalize to us what they see. It is a very effective way to still the mind and become more grounded and centered. I have used it myself countless times. This meditation takes that core idea of focusing on a single item - only in this case, driven by the sequence of the alphabet (sequencing is also excellent) - and expanding upon it in a much deeper way. I really enjoyed it and expect to use it myself and perhaps with others as situations may permit. Thank you so much for sharing this with me and the world. I see the light in you. 🤲❤️🤲

I really like this idea& found it a helpful way to calm & focus the mind, thank you 🙏